Management Control

This paper examines different issues that managers face when dealing with employees.

This paper explores the relationship between managers and their employees. The author relates a brief history of how workers are viewed by their managers and then a case study of a manager’s relationship to the forty employees that she oversees is detailed. The author poses several questions in order to show different issues that a manager faces and how some of those decisions are made. The author explains how the manager’s relationship with their employees has a direct impact on the department’s success or failure.

Q: What are the barriers that you face in being an effective manager?
A: How long a list do you want? I think that the hardest thing for me is that the company has been involved in a series of shufflings and re-organizations over the past year and a half after we were bought, and this means that the lines of authority keep changing. That means that often something that I say is undercut by someone else, which makes me look as if I don’t know what I’m doing. And that’s the best way that there is to lose control.
“Another problem ” and this is not something that I would want broadcast ” is that the people I work with tend to be very good at their jobs which is great, of course. But it also means that a lot of them are really arrogant. They are a little challenged when it comes to following directions and so sometimes I have to resort to that time-honored line of the paternalistic leader: Do it because I said so.”